Everything that had taken down the soft-serve Suns in the past emerged once again in a heated evening of basketball, and you shudder to think how this series might have unfolded had the Spurs prevailed in Game 4, leaving the Suns to defend home court with a wounded point guard.

But these Suns are different. They overcame all their ghosts and demons. Nash proved he's a hockey player at heart, playing the entire fourth quarter with one eye.

He barked at his players. He showed flashes of serious anger. Early in the third quarter, Stoudemire was losing his cool and yapping on the court, even though he had already received a technical foul earlier in the game. A concerned Grant Hill ran to the sidelines and told his coach that Stoudemire wouldn't shut up.

Gentry spent the next timeout in Stoudemire's face, getting his mind right. It was courageous, hard coaching, something his predecessors would never do. Stoudemire responded by draining huge shots from the perimeter in the fourth quarter.

"This is not what we expected coming into this series," Spurs star Tim Duncan said.

This was a moment of redemption for General Manager Steve Kerr, who walked out of the AT&T Center after that series loss in 2008 determined that the Suns had to change their ways. He lost Mike D'Antoni in the process but gained a basketball team in full.

In his postgame news conference, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich credited Gentry for bringing a real defensive mind-set to the Suns, not a "fake defense" where players try for the first 10 seconds of a possession and then quit.

He also made it a point to illustrate that the once-beleaguered Kerr has some basketball intelligence, after all.

Yep, he sure does.

Popovich's demeanor was one of the strangest, coolest things about this series. He knows all the pain his team has inflicted on Phoenix. He knows that the breaks have gone his way in the past. And he almost seemed happy that the Suns finally broke through the brick wall.

During postgame congratulations, Popovich went out of his way to find Nash, and the Spurs coach broke into a huge smile. He looked genuinely happy for his gritty conqueror.

"We've given him a lot more stitches than that, and he keeps coming back," Spurs coach Popovich said. "I couldn't be happier for a class, class, class guy. I hate him. But he's classy."

The Suns played in the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993.

Call it the 17-year itch, which surely bodes well for the 2010 postseason. For once, destiny seems aligned with Planet Orange.

Former Spurs center David Robinson congratulates Suns head coach Alvin Gentry and forward Grant Hill after eliminating the Spurs in the NBA Western Conference semifinals playoffs at AT&T Center in San Antonio, on May 9, 2010.